W. B. Turrill 
253 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE PERIANTH IN 
RANUNCULUS AURICOMUS AND ANEMONE 
CORONARIA. 
By W. B. Turrill, B.Sc. 
[With Three Figures in the Text.] 
HE origin of the perianth in the Angiosperms has already 
been discussed from different points of view by Worsdell 
(1) and Rendle (2) in an early volume of this journal and it is 
unnecessary to recall in detail the theories which are there debated. 
The two extreme views are that the perianth has been derived 
entirely and directly from either the bracts or the stamens. 
Compromising suggestions are that the calyx has been derived from 
bracts and the corolla from stamens, and that the perianth in some 
group or groups of plants has arisen by metamorphosis of bracts 
and in other groups by metamorphosis of stamens. Genera and 
species of Ranunculaceae have frequently been mentioned in the 
controversy, especially by those who have accepted the staminoid 
origin of the perianth, and it seems worth while to record some 
observations made this spring on flowers of Ranunculus auricomus 
and also to describe an anomalous specimen of Anemone coronaria 
recently received at Kew. 
Ranunculus auricomus is a species of buttercup common 
throughout a large part of Europe and known from most parts of 
the British Isles except the extreme north of Scotland. A large 
patch grows in the shade under a walnut-tree north of the Aroid 
House in Kew Gardens, and last May the opportunity was taken 
of making a careful examination of some hundreds of flowers. The 
results may be most conveniently summarized as follows :— 
1. The majority of the flowers had no petals ( “ honey leaves ” 
of Prantl) or staminodes. In such flowers five sepals were con¬ 
stantly present. 
2. The normally developed sepals were greenish-yellow with 
a deeper tinge of green towards the apex, or green with a yellow 
margin of greater or less width, they had no trace of a nectary and were 
always hairy on the hack and glabrous on the inner (upper) surface. 
3. The fully developed petals were bright deep yellow in 
colour, quite glabrous on both surfaces, and each was provided on 
the inside a short distance above the base with a small, oval- 
orbicular, shallow pit which served as a nectary. 
